Tunisian police detained a Ukrainian topless activist in the capital Tunis before expelling her from the North African country on Tuesday, a leader of the women’s protest movement Femen said.
“Some men entered her hotel room, ordered her to take her belongings and drove to the police... She was deported and is now on a plane to Kiev,” Femen’s leader in Paris, Inna Shevchenko, told AFP on the phone.
Meanwhile, three other Femen women, two French and one German, face jail terms of up to a year when they go on trial in Tunis on Wednesday, although their lawyer is confident of a lighter sentence.
They are charged with indecency and an attack on public morals after staging a topless protest last week outside the main courthouse in Tunis in support of Sboui, a young Tunisian with the same “sextremist” movement.
Sboui, who was arrested last month after painting the word “Femen" on a wall “near a cemetery in an act of protest against hardline Islamists, is separately due to appear before an investigating judge on Wednesday.
Held in detention since May 19, she has not yet been formally charged but risks between six months and two years in jail if tried for indecency and desecrating a cemetery.
The judge has indicated that she could be accused of acting as part of an organised gang and therefore attract a heavier sentence.
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Last Update: Tuesday, 4 June 2013 KSA 22:27 - GMT 19:27
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